Behind The Tracks: Midland Railway - Hair Song (Single) (2026)

Hair Song has quite a history, dating back to Midland Railway's very early days. Had we recorded it sooner, it could have been on the Late Arrivals EP - it was written only shortly after those 3 songs.

Our first bass player, Thom Cuell, was in the band for under a year, but he was quite heavily involved in the songwriting process. After he left the band quite suddenly, Hair Song was the only one of his ideas that we kept working on and developing. It gave our live set something a bit different from what all our other songs offered - much less of a standard song structure, and less based on lyrics and vocal melody, but with lots of space for throwing in lots of musical ideas, and I think that is why my bandmates have always particularly enjoyed playing this one (which has been the case throughout multiple lineups).

We barely ever left it out of the set until David's passing in 2018, and when we got the band back together in 2021, we initially left this one out, as it was not one where everyone could just follow what I was doing, so it was a more difficult song for new band members to learn. Last year, we needed to freshen up our live sets, so we reintroduced Hair Song, and then, when we were ready to record, this was one everyone was keen to work on in the studio.

 

We recorded Hair Song with Andy James at Through The Roof Recording Studio in Hyde, at the same time that we recorded All-Day Epic Warhammer.

 

The two songs could not be much more different, but I really like the fact that no two Midland Railway songs sound like we're rehashing the same formula. The journey from writing Hair Song to recording and releasing it has been exceptionally long, but hopefully it will be worth the wait. I am curious to see how it is received.

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